The amount of video data needed to depict even a relatively short film can be substantial, which may result in difficulties when the data is to be streamed or otherwise communicated across a communications network with limited bandwidth capacity. Thus, video data is generally compressed before being communicated across modern day telecommunications networks. Video compression devices often use software and/or hardware at the source to code the video data prior to transmission, thereby decreasing the quantity of data needed to represent digital video images. The compressed data is then received at the destination by a video decompression device that decodes the video data. With limited network resources and ever increasing demands of higher video quality, improved compression and decompression techniques that improve compression ratio with little to no sacrifice in image quality are desirable.
For example, video compression may use intra-frame prediction, in which a pixel may be predicted from a reference pixel in the same video frame or slice. An accuracy of prediction may depend on a distance between the predicted pixel and its reference pixel. Thus, if the distance is relatively big, the accuracy of intra-prediction may decrease, and a bit-rate needed for the compressed video may increase.